


Rebuilding and Other DIY Projects

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Eventual Relationships, F/F, F/M, Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:21:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern dystopian AU with futuristic/fantasy elements: In the wake of his father's political ruin, Nathaniel Howe returns home after years away at University and gets a job at a hardware/building supplies store (despite knowing nothing about screwdrivers, lumber treatments, or saws). His family, upper ruling class for generations, has been plunged into poverty, social ruin, and a community that hates them (and rightfully so). And all this in the midst of brewing class and cultural warfare. Mahariel & Co. buy some weird things and Nathaniel,  in what begins as an innocent crush, is thrust into the world of the Wardens, an underground vigilante group that works to fight back against the tyranny of the upper class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You'll Find All Kinds at Varel's DIY Discount

Nathaniel doesn’t look up from his magazine when the bell above the door rings arrival. If they need something, hopefully they’ll ask someone else. He keeps his foot propped firmly on the counter, his stool tipped back and shoulders against the wall. His supervisor would kill him and he takes a little spiteful joy in that. In truth, he doesn’t care a lick about this job—he’s got no burning passion for carpentry or electrical; he just needs an excuse to get out of the house. The extra cash doesn’t hurt either.

He can hear them—a few sets of footsteps wandering up and down the aisles, perusing hammers and moulding and sand paper. It’s beyond him, honestly, why anyone would bother with a hardware store. Things never turn out quite as good when you try to do them yourself. He’s finally learned that after his eighteenth failed birdhouse. It’s probably for the best—his mother had really lost her patience with all the hammering.

The thought of it might be funny if the evidence of his failure weren’t still on display: his fingers plump and purpled, bandaged hands, nicked nails and bloodied thumb.

He shrugs, and continues staring at the magazine. He’s not read a word of it; doesn’t even know what the article is about, really. He’d just picked the thing up somewhere, a prop as a distraction from the endless _nothing_ that happens during his shift. A way to let his mind wander without seeming quite so inattentive.

His patrons drop a bundle of supplies on the counter and he sets the magazine down without looking up.

_Hammer. Ok._ He runs it over the scanner and there’s a phantom ache in his thumb.

_Rope._

_More rope._

_What are they doing with so much rope?_

He looks up, his damnable curiosity winning out over his desire to avoid interaction, and sees her reading the title of his discarded magazine article upside down.

“Didn’t know shems cared about _The Decline of Historical Cultural Practices in the Urban Dalish Population_ ,” she says dryly, tilting her head to adjust for the angle.

When she looks up at him, she raises her eyebrow.

She’s actually... quite lovely. Brown hair knotted into a braid and pretty green eyes. Odd to see an elf this side of town, though, especially with those tattoos.

But really, tattoos and all, she’s very pretty. He notes the mole on the edge of her jaw, and the chapped lips. He follows the lines of her tattoos—curves and dots cover her cheeks and slope across her forehead; delicate lines ride down the bridge of her nose—and tries to keep his eyes politely off the points of her ears.

“Hey. Hey pretty boy.” Nathaniel blinks. Maker, he’s been staring! One of the men with her—a short, burly ginger—raps his knuckles on the counter. “You gonna ring us up? Today, maybe?”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, I—I apologize,” he stammers. He drags another loop of rope over the scanner and chances a glance up at her. Her face is impassive, eyeing the door behind him, and her hand rests impatiently on her hip.

_More bloody rope?!_ But he just rubs the back of his neck and says, “That’ll...that’ll be forty three dollars and, um, seventy-six cents.”

“Please,” he adds, when the burly, bearded ginger gives him another nasty look.

She grabs her bags and her other companion—a tall, lanky blonde fellow—counts out a few bills.

Nathaniel pulls the leftover from the register and hands it back with a receipt.

“Thank you,” the blonde says, cramming his change back into his pocket.

“Right. Of course. You’re welcome.” _Maker._ He’s making a fool of himself.

She nods her head curtly and they head out the door, the bell ringing their egress.

“ _Shit,_ ” he hisses, grabbing the magazine.

_The Decline of Historical Cultural Practices in the Urban Dalish Population_? What does that even _mean_?

He flips the flimsy book shut and considers the cover. _Journal of Ferelden Social Sciences_? He glares at the magazine rack across from his register, as if the furrowing of his brows will have the rack contemplating its wrongs. The _Journal of Ferelden Social Sciences_ is unsurprisingly absent; no doubt it wouldn’t quite fit in with titles like _DIY Monthly_ and _Getting Hammered._

_Where the hell did I_ get _this?_ He wonders, feeling the corner of his lip pull up in disbelief.

But... well, it’s not like he’s got anything else to do right now...

He props his foot back on the counter and ties back his hair, resting his shoulders against the wall and resuming the precariously tilting perch of his stool.

_“Prior to the expansion of the human population into Fereldan’s more agricultural areas, the now disparate elvhen groups called Dalish were reviving many cultural practices that had previously been lost to them during...”_

~~~

“Don’t scrape the chairs like that, Nathaniel,” his mother says, not looking up from her book.

So of course, he scrapes the chair just a few more inches away from the table—a particularly satisfying screech disrupting the quiet of the kitchen—or _dining room_ as his mother is so inclined to call it. They don’t have a dining room anymore, not a real one. But she just can’t seem to let it go.

She slaps the book down against the arm of her chair. “Nathaniel! What did I _just_ say?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, not sorry at all, and slumps into his chair to eat his cereal.

There’s plenty to complain about, sure—this house leaks and there’s always a draft, the floor of his room seems to be caving in and the door won’t stay closed, the sink gurgles and Maker knows what’s down there interfering with the plumbing, the lights have been shut off three times this year... and, of course, _we no longer have a dining room,_ he thinks dryly.

But he can’t say he misses the food. Anyone else might, sure—Thomas certainly does—but he thinks he can get by on cereal and rice-and-beans just fine. They’d missed out on cereal, truly. It’s a marvel. Cinna-Squares are the best thing since kittens, so far as Nathaniel’s concerned.

He pulls the rolled-up magazine out of his back pocket (it’s all bent-up now, but still) and plops it down onto the table, leafing through the pages until he finds where he left off.

“Did you know,” he says, shovelling another sinfully delicious spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “That that Loghain fellow that Dad was supporting in the election—did you know he’d been accused of trafficking?”

His mother has returned to her book, however, and doesn’t look up at him.

“Mom,” he says, a bit louder and with a mouthful of Cinna-Squares. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes,” she says, absently turning a page. “Yes, that’s lovely, dear.”

He rolls his eyes, but he keeps talking. “It says here that he was one of several prime suspects in a case near the capital—over forty elves went missing and lots of people chalked it up to that plague that ran through, you remember? Dad never mentioned that during the trial; did he mention that to you?”

She turns another page, her eyebrows lowered in concentration and, likely, irritation.

“You know, come to think of it, wasn’t he planning on implementing some sort of—”

“Nathaniel,” she says, looking fiercely over her readers and her book drooping in her hands. “I am trying to _read._ ”

He huffs and shovels down more cereal, reading in tense silence until he hears the front door open.

“Thomas?” he calls to other room.

“Yes,” his brother says, coming up behind Nathaniel’s chair and dropping his bag heavily on the table.

“How was school?”

“Boring. I suck at algebra and Melissa Higgins was being such a b—a jerk about it,” he amends, looking quickly over at his mother who doesn’t seem to be paying them any attention.

Nathaniel gets up to make a second bowl of cereal as Thomas rattles off the events of his day.

“My friend Charlie fell off the bars and busted his lip. It looks so cool. He told all the girls in math that he got in a fight.” Thomas pulls a notebook out of his bag and flips it open, rifling through pages and pages of scribbled figures and equations. Nathaniel never liked math either.

“None of the kids give you a hard time today?”

Thomas opens his textbook, far too carefully, and says “No.”

Nathaniel sighs when he slumps back into his chair. There’s been far more blacklash than he’d have thought—then again, he knows very little about the working of politics and even less about the workings of politicians—his father especially, it seems.

“I talked to Delilah,” he says cheerfully. “She asked about you.”

Thomas perks up at that. They rarely hear from their sister these days, what with all the... tension.

“Is she going to come visit?”

It is now, with the mention of Delilah’s possible presence in their house, that their mother finally decides to speak.

“No,” she says. “She absolutely will _not._ I forbid it, Nathaniel.” She shuts her book with a loud clap and leaves the room, her tea left steaming on the window sill.

Thomas, pencil slack in his hand, seems to have practically wilted at their mother’s outburst. But Nathaniel nudges his arm and whispers “You and I are going for a visit after school tomorrow.”

At this news, Thomas beams. “Will you let me drive?” he whispers back.

_Maker,_ Nathaniel thinks. Teaching Thomas to drive has been a... well, frankly, terrifying experience.

“Maybe. But, you have to do all your homework,” he says, wagging a finger and finishing up his cereal.

~~~

When they get out of the car, Nathaniel has to hide his face as he sucks in a big gulp of air. Maker help him, Thomas cannot drive. Nathaniel would never say it, but he thinks the boy might be hopeless. If Thomas had ridden the breaks any harder, the car might’ve split in half.

But, to his relief, Delilah comes bounding out of her little house and gathers Thomas up in her arms.

“Did you drive here?” She’s crooning. “Did Nate actually let you drive?”

Her smile is contagious. Before Nathaniel realizes it, a grin is spread across his face.

“Yeah,” Thomas says. “The whole way.”

Nathaniel reaches out to wrap his arms around her, squishing Thomas a bit in between them.

“He’s... learning,” Nathaniel says carefully.

She pulls away and waves them through the door. Funny how he’d thought so poorly of her new home when she’d left and now, well, it’s hardly nicer than the one they’re living in honestly but he can... appreciate it now. Tiny rooms and low ceilings and only one toilet. Delilah’s sink doesn’t gurgle, at least, and the tap water doesn’t taste like rust.

He drops onto her couch—not much more than a pile of cushions, really—and Thomas nestles in beside him.

“You want some tea or something?” she asks. _Fretting already,_ he thinks.

He shakes his head but Thomas says “Yes, please.”

Before, he’d have scolded his brother, told him not to trouble her. But Thomas doesn’t get many treats nowadays, and Delilah makes it just the way Thomas likes it (that is, far too sweet for Nathaniel’s taste).

She sets a kettle and situates herself across from them. “How’s school, Thomas?”

“Fine.” It’s not, not really. But Nathaniel won’t stick his nose in. There’s nothing she can do about it anyway.

“And Mom?”

Nathaniel just shakes his head a bit. Nothing new to report there.

Discussing their mother—their father too, nowadays—does nothing for the mood. But Delilah is nothing if not a cheery presence.

“I’ve a surprise,” she says, smile beaming.

Maker help him, if she’s gotten one of those weird, hairless rabbit things, he’s going to—

But she claps her hands together and squeals; it throws Nathaniel quite off guard.

“I’m having a baby!”

His mouth pops open—he knows it, but he can’t really feel his face. Thomas, however, is up with her and dancing around the small living room, chanting “A baby, a baby!”

He’s happy, of course he’s happy. Albert is a... good sort. But he thinks about Thomas at the grocery store last week: _“Are we eating rice and beans again?”_ And he thinks about the draft in the house and the leaks. And he thinks about Thomas being sent home from school for starting fights in the yard: _“They said Dad was a crook, though! They said we were nothing but trash!”_ He thinks about how Delilah’s tap water doesn’t taste like rust and how their mother had ranted for hours after she’d found out Delilah and Albert had eloped: _“That girl is dead to me! Dead! She’ll ruin the campaign. You can bet that this’ll show in the polls. Your father will be humiliated!”_

But Delilah looks so happy, holding Thomas’ hands and dancing around the living room. She doesn’t seem to have suffered at all for the life she’d chosen, and, he must admit, he really hadn’t either. They’ve... downgraded, certainly, but they’re managing.

She holds out her hand to him, inviting him to join their little party. _That can all wait,_ he decides. _Right now, we celebrate._

~~~

The bell over the door rings and Nathaniel panics, looking up from his newest project just in time to see the tail of a flannel shirt disappear into the aisle with all the nails and screws.

He’s not really supposed to _borrow_ supplies from the store, but Maker he is so incredibly bored. There’s not been a single customer all weekend. _And aren’t people_ supposed _to do home improvement projects on the weekends?_ He thinks. Regardless, he’s made quite a mess of his counter—glue and blocks of wood and shavings and a few severely misshapen nails. And, in the midst of it all, failed birdhouse number nineteen. Maker save him, he just can’t help himself.

But he shoves it all aside so he can scan the customer’s purchase with as little embarrassment as possible.

As he’s corralling the deviously splintery pile of wood shavings into the trash bin, his lone customer approaches the counter.

“Excuse me,” the fellow says, and Nathaniel recognizes him as the man who’d been in last week—with the elf and the angry redhead and the unbelievable amounts of rope. “Can you help me with something?”

It’s never occurred to him that someone might actually need his input on anything hardware-related. _But I suppose I do work at a hardware store,_ he reasons. _Probably something my boss should’ve considered when he hired me..._

But he just says, “Uh, sure,” and dusts the leftover shavings from his hands.

“I’m looking for,” he squints at a rumpled scrap of notebook paper, clearly taken from his pocket. “A _T8 Torx_.”

He looks at Nathaniel expectantly. Nathaniel squints. “A... what?”

“Here.” The blonde passes the crumpled paper to Nathaniel who looks at it. _T8 Torx_ is scribbled across the page in pencil, but seeing it doesn’t help. Nathaniel has no idea what a T8 Torx is.

“I, um, I’m sorry, sir. I don’t, uh...”

“Mahariel told me it was a screwdriver.”

Well, Nathaniel knows where the screwdrivers are, at least. _Sure,_ he thinks, with a tiny surge of confidence. _Sure, I can find a screwdriver._

He leads the blonde toward the back aisles, where they keep the screwdrivers. Nathaniel never would’ve thought that there were enough types of screwdrivers to fill up an entire aisle, but, well, here they are. He’d been a bit taken aback by it when he’d been taken on his “Employee Tour” of the store. _Why?_ He’d wondered. _Why make so many different kinds? Why not just one kind of screw?_

It still doesn’t make any sense, actually.

“You know,” the blonde says. “I never got why there are so many. Seems overly complicated to me.”

“Exactly!” Nathaniel says, a bit too loud. He’s not nearly so passionate about screwdrivers as his expression is suggesting. He can feel the warmth spreading across his face now—Maker but he’s going to make a fool of himself again.

He pushes his hair behind his ear and they peruse the shelves for a few minutes. At least his customer seems amicable. _And patient,_ he thinks, gratefully. _Doesn’t seem like the type to fill out a complaint form for the suggestions box, anyway._

After fifteen (somewhat awkward) minutes, and with nothing to show, Nathaniel decides to look in the catalogue they keep under the counter. Maybe it’s a specialized screwdriver and needs to be ordered...

While he’s flipping through the pages— _and pages and pages and Maker how many types of screwdrivers are there?!_ —he hears a buzzing noise.

“Oh, that’s me. Sorry,” the blonde says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cell phone. “I’ll just be a minute.”

He ambles a few steps away and Nathaniel tries not to listen—or to at least not look like he’s listening.

_“Anders,”_ the tinny voice in the phone says. _“What’s taking so long?”_

“I’m looking for it. Are you sure this is what we need?”

_“Yes, T8; You haven’t found it yet?”_

“Well... you wouldn’t believe how many screwdrivers they stock here, Mahariel.”

Nathaniel tries not to laugh, but the blonde—Anders—raises his free hand in mock surrender as she lets out a short string of expletives.

“Ok,” he says, smiling into his phone. “Ok, ok. Hold onto your ears. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

He stuffs his phone back into his pocket—Nathaniel’s starting to see a habit here—and shrugs. “I guess I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says. “Maybe we’ll both get lucky and Mahariel won’t tear the store down.”

Nathaniel laughs, the awkwardness diffused, and says, “Yeah, my boss might take that out of my paycheck.”

Anders waves as he leaves the store, the tiny bell overhead signalling his exit, and Nathaniel stuffs the catalogue back under his counter.

_Mahariel, eh?_ _Pretty name,_ he decides, remembering the lines of her face. But probably best not to dwell on that...

He debates bringing the birdhouse back out, but really, there’s no saving it at this point. And he certainly can’t put it up if it’s just going to fall down, likely taking some poor, unsuspecting bird family with it.

He shrugs and decides he’ll close five minutes early today. As he packs up his things, he remembers the tiny glue gun he’d been using and grabs the handful of glue sticks he hadn’t used up. He carries them back to where they keep the 99¢ bins. That’s how he’d rationalized his _borrowing_ , in part anyway: he’d mostly only used the cheap stuff. But as he drops them into the little bin labelled _glue sticks_ , he notices, just to the left, another bin.

_Torx._


	2. We're Going to Need a Manual for This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel tries to be smooth (you can imagine how that goes) and is forced to face a few of the realities that had slipped past him while he was away for the last few years. Lots of emphasis on big/little bro relationship in this one!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note heavily implied child abuse toward the end and overtones of bullying and racism. It's approached, obviously, from a "this is bad" perspective but still, it's probably better that you be aware of it before you start reading.

Nathaniel pretends he’s wearing his nicest shirt for no other reason than to look presentable at work.

However, as soon as he enters the kitchen, Thomas calls him on his bullshit.

“Why are you wearing that?” Thomas asks him, ignoring his reheated leftover rice-and-beans.

“It’s a shirt,” Nathaniel answers, as though it was a ridiculous question.

“That’s your _fancy_ shirt,” Thomas says, almost sneering at him. “You hate button up shirts.”

He’s certainly right about that. Nathaniel would rather waste his time a million different ways than buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt. A T-shirt will do him just as well any day, thank you very much. But with that silent admission comes the silent acknowledgement of Thomas’ other point.

“I’m just... wearing a nice shirt to work,” he says, trying to decide if he should forego his beloved Cinna-Squares to save his stomach the trouble of nervous roiling.

“Did you meet a pretty girl?” Thomas is practically singing.

“No!” He shouts in self-defense, far too quickly to get away with it. _Maker, a man tries to eat some bloody cereal in a nice shirt and gets ambushed in his own house._

“Did you meet a handsome boy, then?” Thomas tries.

Nathaniel covers his face with his hand. “No, Thomas. Eat your breakfast.”

Thomas weighs his reactions, makes his own verdict, and shoves his spoon into his food. He doesn’t break eye contact and the intensity of his stare finally breaks Nathaniel down. Definitely no cereal today.

“Does it look alright?” He suddenly has the urge to run upstairs and change.

Thomas eyes him a bit more, as if the appraisal is a matter of fine detail. Nathaniel smoothes his hands anxiously over the shirt, more concerned about wrinkles than he’s ever been. “Come on, Thomas! Do you think she’ll—”

“I knew it!” Thomas yells, pumping his fist in the air and getting a spoonful of rice all over the table. “I’m going to tell Delilah.”

_Sly little..._

“Eat your breakfast and go to school,” Nathaniel says, rolling his eyes and heading toward the front door. He wonders just where Thomas learned to work people like that. _But then again,_ he thinks, _maybe he just knows how to work me._

~~~

He spends the entire morning fiddling with the screwdriver. _T8 Torx,_ he thinks. _How ridiculously complicated._ And it is. He can’t think of a single good reason why there should be so many distinct types of screws.

But the little bell over the door doesn’t ring.

At first, he busies himself with shuffling the odds and ends he keeps on his counter: a bottle of water that’s not been touched since he brought it, a tube of chapstick, a photo of Thomas and Delilah that she’d taken at the park, a ring of keys to the storage rooms. This activity doesn’t hold his interest long, although he does spend more than a few minutes reminiscing about that park—while he’d been away these last few years, he’d promised Thomas many times that he’d come visit. “ _Soon,”_ he’d say over the phone. “ _I just can’t right now; I’ve got lots of papers coming up.”_

_Well,_ he thinks bitterly, _I’m certainly around now._ But he immediately regrets that. This isn’t Thomas’ fault, of all people. And to be perfectly frank, University had been more about getting the hell away than getting a degree. He hadn’t cared much for his studies; he’d enjoyed certain subjects, sure, but the amount of time and effort he’d put into papers and presentations and exams and projects—he’d thrown himself into what was before him for little other reason than that it was there and he hadn’t any idea what to do otherwise.

One did not earn scholarship on the good graces of their father’s political allies and then come home with a C average.

He’s also spent far too much time re-reading a few articles in the _Journal of Ferelden Social Sciences_. Wherever he’d picked it up, it was an old copy: last quarter of last year, released at the tail end of the series of trials that had led, among other things, to his father’s prison sentence. It was no accident that this issue had been particularly focused on human-elvhen relations and the class warfare that was brewing. “The Great Divide,” his father had called it often. _Not so great now,_ he thinks, flipping right past _The Question of Class Secession: Is it an Option?_ and _Cultivating Culture: Social Dynamics among the Growing Lower Class._ That’s just what he needs: a quick how-to guide for poor-people etiquette. Might do him some good, actually. But no, he relishes in the almost obscene sound of hastily bent and turned magazine pages, strangely loud in the quiet of the store, until he finds the page he wants.

He’s seen elves, plenty of them. And, certainly, he’s heard of the Dalish. He hadn’t really thought there was a difference. But the tattoos, apparently, are part of it. The elf in the photo doesn’t look anything like her—his hair is different, the shape of his jaw, all of it. And the tattoos are not the same. But perhaps if he stares at it long enough, some sort of understanding will come to him.

There hadn’t been much information in the article, just brief overviews—a bulleted list of unexplained practices that were slowly being lost. And this had been the only photo.

_“Above: Despite their myriad differences, all Dalish share certain traditions,”_ reads the caption. _“The art of vallaslin (‘blood writing’ in the common tongue) is one such practice.”_

Not much to go on, really.

As he’s mulling it over (and growing more and more frustrated with the lack of description) the bell over the door signals a visitor.

In his panic—Maker help him, he can’t be caught staring at this magazine again—he tries to slide it across the counter, hoping it will disappear underneath the shelves. It does not. Instead, in his haste, he sends it spinning over the side in a flutter of pages as it lands on the floor in front of the check-out counter.

The blush is creeping over his face as Thomas rounds the corner of the counter and drops his bag onto the floor.

“What’s wrong with you?” He says, taking in the red of Nathaniel’s face.

But Nathaniel just shakes his head. He’d forgotten it was Monday _._ Thomas gives him a bewildered look and picks the magazine up off the floor. “You are _so_ weird,” he says, tossing it back over the counter.

_Ok, you need to calm down, Nate,_ he tells himself, rubbing his forehead. He can feel the blush receding, relieved that she hadn’t walked in to see him practically throwing evidence of his ignorance into the air like confetti.

Thomas takes his vacant seat, pulling a notebook out of his bag and then scrounging around for a pencil.

“More Algebra?” Nathaniel asks him. A slip of yellow construction paper peeks out of the notebook and Nathaniel absently tugs it out. “What’s this?”

“Nothing!” Thomas yells, trying to jerk it away. Nathaniel raises it out of his brother’s reach.

“Well, it’s clearly _something_.” He holds Thomas at bay with his free hand and eyes the paper. In thick permanent marker are the words _Clap if you hate Howe._ “What the hell is this, Thomas?”

He’s not going to give it back without an explanation, that’s clear, so Thomas turns away, pretending his attention is on his homework, and says quietly “Someone taped it to my back today.”

Nathaniel breathes out a heavy sigh. He can only imagine: Thomas must have walked around for quite a while, hearing the oddly timed applause throughout the day.

“Are you—” He’s going to ask Thomas if he’s alright, if he knows who did it, if there’s anything he can do to help, but Thomas cuts him off.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, eyes stuck to the equations in front of him. And Nathaniel knows: when Thomas doesn’t want to discuss it, there’s not a damned thing in the world that will make him. Stubbornness all three of them had inherited from their mother, he supposes.

“Here,” he says, pulling some quarters out of his pocket. “Go across the street and get some chips or something.”

Not exactly what he’d call a pick-me-up but Thomas is so sick of cereal and rice-and-beans, he’s beaming over vending machine chips. They haven’t eaten out in a while; maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take him through the drive through on the way home. _But just the one time,_ Nathaniel thinks, preparing already for Thomas’ inevitable whine for more. _I’m not squandering my pay check on chicken nuggets._

“And pick up a newspaper,” he calls after his brother, who waves his hand inattentively in response.

The little bell rings when Thomas heads out, his sights set on the gas station across the road. Nathaniel decides this might be a good opportunity to do some investigating. He pulls the notebook toward him, all scribbles and figures and funny but very tasteless drawings of the Algebra teacher. Nothing useful—no notes or names. No more nasty signs, either.

The bell above the door rings and Nathaniel shoves the notebook away, preparing his defense. “I wasn’t snooping, I swear!”

“Well, that is very... good to know,” says one of the people in the doorway.

And Nathaniel recognizes him: Anders, the blonde, the screwdriver guy. And of course, to Nathaniel’s general horror, Anders is accompanied by the pretty girl he’d called _Mahariel._

“I—sorry, I thought you were my brother,” he says, fighting the urge to hide under his counter.

“Nope, just me. _This one,_ ” he says, hitching his thumb at Mahariel. “Says that we’re both a couple of brainless buffoons—”

“I said ‘brainless _baboons_ ,’” she interjects, rolling her eyes.

“Right. Brainless baboons who couldn’t find our way out of a tent, let alone find the proper screwdriver.” He crosses his arms and looks to Nathaniel as if he’s waiting for Nathaniel to correct her—which he is most certainly not going to do. Normally, he’d feel the need to defend himself, but, to be fair, they’d hunted for that bloody screwdriver for almost half an hour yesterday. And she’s not wearing the sort of expression that makes him think he’d win this fight.

But he pulls the T8 Torx from his pocket—far too proud of his accomplishment—and tries to be smooth. “Well, I did a bit more digging yesterday after you left and—” But while he’s trying to show off, spinning the little handle between his fingers, he drops it.

_Maker. Just kill me now._

He picks it up and they walk over to his counter to pay. “Oh, uh, no. Don’t worry about that,” he says, holding it out to her.

She squints at him. “Why?”

“For your trouble,” he says, feeling almost as dumb as he had yesterday. When he’d left, he thought the $1.09 he’d paid for the thing would be worth it; he’d pictured this scene very differently in his head, a bit more... suave.

She’s just looking at him so strangely—her face is blank, save the slight upward quirk of one side of her mouth. He brushes his hair behind his ear, but regrets it immediately, realizing he’s turning beet red—face and ears and all—and he tries to be inconspicuous as he smoothes his hair back over his ear. He feels like he’s going to catch fire.

“Thank you,” Anders says, taking the screwdriver and saving him from the lengthening awkwardness of holding out his hand.

The bell above the door rings and Thomas, chips in hand and cheese dust already on his fingers, practically bounces through the door. It takes Thomas only a moment to put the pieces together—Nathaiel flustered and blushing and rubbing the back of his neck while some pretty elf looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“Is this the girl you wore your fancy shirt for?” Thomas asks him, retaking his place in front of his homework. Nathaniel takes a moment to seriously consider hanging Thomas upside down from the ceiling fan in their living room.

“I—what? No, don’t be...” But Thomas has outed him; he can’t be saved now.

More strange looks from her, more silence. Nathaniel wants to dig a hole and bury himself in it.

“Oh, look Mahariel, it _is_ a nice shirt,” Anders says, patting her on the back and gesturing at Nathaniel’s torso. Nathaniel takes back every nice thing he’d thought about the man yesterday.

“Thanks for the screwdriver,” she says finally. The deadpan tone is like a punch in the stomach.

“Right,” he says. “Right. Have a nice day,” he tries, slapping on a customer service grin that would frighten a toddler.

On their way out, Anders loops his arm around her shoulders, giving her a playful shake. He’s whispering something to her, but Nathaniel can’t make it out. _Of course,_ he thinks when the door shuts behind them. _Why didn’t I think about that—that they were... that he’s..._ But just as he’s at a loss for vocalising, he’s equally stuck in even the privacy of his own head.

“Thomas!” He’s never felt so _not_ guilty for rummaging through his brother’s things. “Why did you—”

The little bell rings. He looks toward the entrance where Mahariel has poked her head back through the door. “Nice shirt,” she says simply, expression and voice unchanged, and closes the door again.

_Oh. Well. Good then._ He doesn’t move for a moment, eyes still stuck to the closed shop door, and finally Thomas taps him on the back with a newspaper that, wonder of wonders, he actually remembered to pick up. “You going to keep staring like that? Should I leave you and the door alone?”

~~~

After they’ve gotten a paper bag full of chicken nuggets and fries from the drive-through window, Nathaniel turns onto the street heading... _It’s still so strange to call it home,_ he thinks.

But perhaps it shouldn’t be: they’ve been there for several months now. Lucky to have it, honestly, after everything was finished.

“You didn’t tell me the pretty girl you met was a knife-ear,” Thomas says absently, digging out some fries.

Nathaniel is so caught off guard by Thomas’ casual slur that he nearly swerves into the other lane.

“Wh—Thomas. Where did you hear that word?” Nathaniel had never said it himself, had he? No. No, he’s never been in the habit of using that sort of language. And Delilah, certainly not. Their mother?

But Thomas says “I heard it at school.”

Nathaniel probably shouldn’t be relieved by that. In fact, he’s almost certain he’s heard his father fling words like that around, so there’s nothing to be relieved about.

“From who? From some of your friends?”

“What friends?” Thomas mutters. Nathaniel isn’t sure what to say to that, but Thomas continues. “I heard one of the teachers say it.”

“A _teacher_? What in the world—” Nathaniel takes advantage of the pause at the stop sign and turns to his brother. “Thomas, don’t say that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It’s...” But how does he explain that? It’s demeaning. It’s exclusionary. It’s just downright _rude._ “It’s like saying ‘Clap if you hate Howe.’”

“Oh.”

Someone honks behind them and Nathaniel gives his rear view mirror a nasty look before turning right.

_Maker,_ he thinks, pulling into the driveway. _What kind of teacher..._

But he’ll deal with that later.

~~~

“Chicken nuggets?” Their mother hasn’t looked this disgusted since Delilah had brought Albert for dinner. “What in the Maker’s name have we been reduced to?” She throws her hands up and turns toward their kitchen— _dining room,_ Nathaniel thinks, rolling his eyes at her back.

“I’m sick of bloody rice and beans,” Thomas says. “Not like _you’re_ doing anything about it.”

She turns back toward them and the phrase _fire in her eyes_ doesn’t do justice to the glare she gives her youngest son as she draws back her hand for what is sure to be a slap that echoes throughout the whole of their ramshackle house. But Nathaniel, to the surprise of all three of them, grabs her wrist.

“Absolutely not,” he says. She jerks away and Nathaniel, as angry as he is with her, is horrified when he sees fear in his mother’s eyes. Although she’d always managed to instil anxiety, even fear, in her three children simply by proximity, she is a petite woman—much shorter than Nathaniel, much smaller of frame. Her fearsomeness came, foremost, from her sharp stares and shrieking voice, carrying nasty names and threats and criticisms from one end of her immaculate mansion to the other.

But she’s lost all of that now and, looking down into her eyes, wide with caution and surprise, Nathaniel realizes he needn’t be afraid of her anymore. And Thomas needn’t either—whether he’s been overly mouthy or not.

But he’s not pleased with the thought of her being afraid of him either.

She turns around and walks back to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her and not once looking back at them.

He’s still, looking after her, a moment too long and Thomas, a few steps behind him, shifts awkwardly.

“Am I in trouble?” He’s holding his elbows when Nathaniel turns back to him.

_Maker,_ he thinks. _While I was away?_

His father had made no secret of his preference for Thomas and, much as it pissed Nathaniel off, he’d never wanted... He’d never expected... _Fuck._

“No,” he says, picking up Thomas’ backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. “You’re not in trouble. Come on.”

And he leads Thomas to the kitchen, where they lay his books out on the table so he can finish up the work he hadn’t completed at the shop and Nathaniel can scan the newspaper Thomas had brought him.

He silently adds _general fuckery_ to the list of things he has to "deal with later." And also, he needs to buy milk.


	3. Step One: Gather Necessary Supplies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mahariel and Anders make the rounds.

Mahariel wakes up to two very wonderful things: a familiar but long-absent weight in bed beside her and uneven, almost grumbly snoring coming from the next room.

Their Wandering Wardens are home.

“Well, glad you’ve made yourself comfortable, Zevran,” she mumbles, cracking open one eye to see stringy blonde hair splayed across a pillow.

“Of course, my dear.” He doesn’t turn over though. _Must be very tired._

“Everything go alright?”

He hums and squeezes his arms around his pillow. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” He turns over to face her and there’s a big bruise on the right side of his face. “Does _anything_ good from the Orlesian Districts?”

She’s quick to want to agree with him, but she’s preoccupied with tracing her fingers gently across the bruise. “This the worst of it?”

“Oh no,” he says, smirking and stretching out on the mattress. “My ego was shattered, possibly beyond repair.”

“Well, we’ll figure something out at the debrief.” She combs some of his hair behind his ear with her fingers, not that it’ll stay, not with the way he sleeps, but still. “Get some rest.”

“Just so you know,” he says as she rises from the bed to stretch and begins pulling on some sweat pants. “Alistair has been crying for good coffee the entire way back. Quite annoying after a while.”

“Noted.” _First thing on the agenda then,_ she thinks, shutting the door quietly behind her as she leaves the room.

Alistair’s snoring grows louder as she approaches. Why he opted for the couch is a mystery; they’re getting pretty full up lately but they’ve still got some free beds. And if she could convince him to bunk with Oghren, then they could at least keep all the snoring to one room (and shut the door, and maybe put up a sound proof wall). Could’ve even bunked with her and Zevran—they’ve been more crowded than this, after all. But there’s no need to wake him. Likely, he’s as tired as Zevran is and there’s no pressing reason for them to be up and about immediately, so she tip toes past the couch and the sleeping, snoring man on it, and makes her way to the kitchen.

Merrill’s sitting up on the counter, pulling Velanna to her for a kiss, when Mahariel walks in.

“Oh, how cute,” Mahariel coos. “Making out when you could be making breakfast.”

Velanna flips her off and, Mahariel would swear, kisses Merrill a bit more forcefully. When they break apart— _took you long enough, too,_ she thinks—Merrill hops down and pours the last of yesterday’s re-warmed coffee into a mug and passes it to her. “We’re running a bit low,” she says.

Mahariel drinks it—loathe as she is to do so—without any sugar. “On coffee?”

“On everything,” Velanna says, heating a pan on their stove, the eye of which seems to have gotten a bit more... tipsy. But perhaps Mahariel’s imagining it.

“I’ll make a run later,” Mahariel says, taking another bitter swallow. Velanna begins cracking eggs into her pan. “Make a list for me.”

“Well,” Merrill begins, counting out with her fingers. “We need some soap—lots of soap—and we need some rice. Oh, and do you think you could find some of those wooden pallets, you know the—”

“Merrill, I meant write it down. I won’t remember any of it.” Mahariel downs the rest of her coffee as quickly as she can. It’s nice—the warmth of it and the buzz of caffeine to get her moving—but gods, black coffee tastes terrible. Day old black coffee is even worse. She walks to the counter and grabs the coffee pot, fills it under the tap and sets the filter with the little bit of Instant Breakfast Blend they have left. She pulls the little box of sugar packets toward her, picking the last two out and dropping them, unopened, into the mug she’s just finished. “Leave the sugar for Alistair; he’s apparently been dying for lack of our prestigious instant grind the whole way back.”

“What am _I_ supposed to put in _my_ coffee then?” Anders leans against the wall behind her, arms crossed and face frozen in mock offense that he wasn’t considered first thing in the morning.

“If _you_ had gotten up on time, _you_ would’ve been able to snatch it up, wouldn’t you?” She rolls her eyes though, and smiles at him. “I’ll pick up some sugar too.”

“Am I going with you today?”

“I’d like you to, if you don’t mind.” Heading into town is going to be tricky—they’ve made lots of trips lately and she knows they’re being eyed by every cop in the District already—but she needs the extra hands and Anders, surprisingly, is very inconspicuous. Or at least he is in comparison to the other members of their rag tag band.

“Well, I’d like to go then,” he says, holding out his hand for the little plate of eggs Velanna passes to him. 

~~~

It’s a different drugstore this time; best to be as safe as possible, they’d decided.

“Alright,” she says, leaning against the brick wall and looking over the list. “We need a few bars of soap, some toothpaste, some... what the hell does this say? Can you read this?” She holds the scrap of paper up for Anders to take and he eyes the scrawling handwriting with a squint.

“It... It looks like ‘tunnels.’ What’s she mean, tunnels?”

Mahariel takes it back and stares at it, thinking about what might be missing from the house and wishing Merrill had neater handwriting.

_Tunnels. Trowels? No. Truffles? Tulips? T—_ “Towels! Paper towels,” she says.

“Oh,” he laughs. “That... makes much more sense.”

“Ok,” she says, handing him the list lest he forget. “I’ll go in first. You scoop up as much soap as you can fit in your pockets and the toothpaste and grab some aspirin too. I’ll buy the paper towels and you buy the shampoo. Good?”

“We’re going to buy the paper towels?”

“Well, I didn’t think they’d fit in your pants,” she says, swatting his hip.

“Hey, I’ll have you know—” But he stops and gives her a dirty look. “Oh, you almost got me there. No way to win that one. That was good.”

“I know, right?” She grins and turns toward the door of the drugstore. “Count to fifteen before you come in,” she says and the automatic door swishes open and she steps inside with the swagger of a conman.

She’s great at this. There’s a spiteful pride that comes with the way the cashier watches her, with the way the shelve-stocker tries to follow her unseen. She wore Alistair’s pant today—just baggy enough on her to invite the perfect amount of suspicion. _Those shifty elves,_ she knows they’re thinking. _Thieving rats come out from their den._

But she’d stopped being an elf a while ago. She’s a Warden now, but that’s not a title one wears out loud. It pains her a bit, that they still see an elf—they’ll run inventory and realize things are missing and of course, they’ll think of her and the next pointy-eared person to walk inside will have a hell of a time buying deodorant.

But it’s good too, adrenaline and spite and necessity more than anything else.

So she uses what she knows and fingers candy bars and cookies and twists around aisles like she’s trying to get out of the shelf-stocker’s sight, luring him along behind her while Anders, across the store in the hygiene aisles, stuffs his jacket and jeans with soap.

She listens closely, never let her eyes wander toward the counter as she hears the cashier ring him up. One beep and a polite “Will that be all for you today, sir?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Have a nice day, sir.”

“You too.”

And the _whoosh_ of the automatic door. _One. Two. Three. Four._

She sees the shelf-stocker in the corner or her vision, rearranging the candy bars she’d just rifled through. Important job, that. _Seven. Eight. Nine._

She makes her way down the neighbouring aisle, listening to the rub of fabric on thighs, frantic to get her back in his line of sight before she has time to swipe anything from the shelves. _Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen._ She picks up a pack of paper towels, 6 count, and carries it to the register.

Beep. “Will that be all for you today?”

“Yes, thank you.”

A silent beat. A receipt and coins deposited into her hand. The _whoosh_ of the automatic doors.

And Anders waiting at the edge of the parking lot. “That one went really smoothly,” he says when she walks over to him.

“Had them eating out of my hand,” she says, grinning and swinging her bag of towels in her hand. “How much soap did you get?”

“Two tubes of toothpaste, six bars of soap, an extra bottle of shampoo, and a couple of spare toothbrushes.”

She’s impressed. But still. “Where in the hell did you hide an extra bottle of shampoo?”

“I’m offended, Mahariel,” he says dramatically, sweeping the back of his hand across his forehead. “You have so little confidence in me.”

She reaches up with her free hand—and stands on her toes, too—to ruffle her fingers through his hair. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Anders may be their newest Warden, but damn if he isn’t a good one.

“Alright, we’ll drop this stuff with Shianni and then head for the High Hill and grab some food.”

“I didn’t know we were going to the Hill today,” he says, and she can sense some hesitation there—not that she can blame him. She’s the best sneak thief among them and the Hill makes even her nervous.

“You don’t have to go,” she promises. “You can stay in the alienage until I get back, if you’d rather.”

He smiles at her—hell of a smile he’s got too—and says “However will you carry all that rich-people food without me?”

~~~

Anders would never say it—not to Mahariel—but he’s just a bit, just a little teensy smidgen of a bit _absolutely terrified_ of the alienage.

It’s not that he’s scared of elves—and that’s exactly why he won’t tell her he’s scared at all; the worst possible misunderstanding to rival all misunderstandings. It’s the sickness and the poverty and the overwhelming anger that presses down on him from one city wall to the other.

He’s never lived in luxury—even when he was a child, before they’d carted him off to a Circle, his family hadn’t had money. Maker, they’d lived out in the boons up north, a dirt road driveway long as this city and rows and rows and _endless bloody rows_ of wheat. He’d practically lived off bread and well water and the occasional gift of vegetables from a friendly First Day check in by neighbours who lived no less than eight miles off.

No, he knows dirt poor. Even now, they’re here because he’s a Warden now, and the Wardens are dirt poor too.

And he knows anger. Maker, does he know anger.

_“The Circles are government funded asylums,”_ the pamphlet had read. _“All those with magical aptitude are afforded safety and comfort and education opportunities befitting their particular potential. Your friend or family member will be in careful hands with...”_

He doesn’t even know why they bother with pamphlets. Not like it makes a difference in the end, whether anyone agrees or not, whether anyone feels better about being dragged off.

Welcome to fucking Kinloch Hold, Government Circle, Ferelden District, case no. 119.72.

He shakes the memory out of his head and follows Mahariel to Shianni’s apartment.

No, he understands their anger, well as he can, anyway. It’s the worry that the anger and desperation is going to end up with him at the pointy end of a knife. “A shem in our part of town, eh, boys? Maybe we ought to whittle down those ears, help you fit in a little better.”

He’s not sure how much of that is truth and how much of that is just what he’s heard. But he doesn’t want to find out, so he stays close to Mahariel, her presence the only protection he might have.

She guides him up the stairs of a complex, wind chimes hanging from balcony railings and little elven children running up and down the steps.

Four knocks. Pause. Two knocks.

“Come in,” she calls from behind the door and even Anders notices something wrong in the pitch of her voice. Mahariel looks at him, confirms his suspicions, and they go inside.

“Shianni, you sound—” But Mahariel doesn’t finish; Shianni is huddled up in the corner of her living room and she clearly hadn’t been expecting Mahariel _plus one._ She wipes her face, frantic, fierce, fumbling, and stands up.

“I didn’t expect you’d bring company,” she says, like she’s not got tears streaming down her face. Her tone is cool, much calmer than the stiffness in her shoulders and much friendlier than the look in her eyes.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Anders has only met Shianni once before; just like today, he’d come along to help Mahariel gather up some supplies and they’d made a stop here, dropping things off to be delivered back home, freeing up their hands to make a stop by the hardware store. Shianni, he had known immediately, was a proud woman, a woman made hard by the hard life she’d lived, and though she wasn’t a Warden, she was what Mahariel had called “an Extension.” An asset, a contact, a safe house when it was needed.

But now he sees it’s not just that, and he should have known before: Shianni is Mahariel’s friend.

Mahariel is at her side in an instant, hands cupping the other woman’s face. “Tell me what happened.”

“Vaughn,” she says simply. Anders doesn’t know what that means. “There were—” She looks over Mahariel’s shoulder at Anders and he feels like an intruder, invited though he was.

“I—I can leave,” he says, though he doesn’t relish the thought of standing alone outside.

“The kitchen,” Mahariel says, to his relief, jerking her head to the right. “Pile our stuff on the table; I’ll come get you in a minute.”

And he dips his head in apology or thanks or just general manners; he doesn’t really know.

‘The kitchen’ is a bit of an overstatement; he struggles to find a word more apt than _tiny._ And he’s willing to bet that if he opened a cabinet, it would be bare. He doesn’t do that, of course; he’s got manners, as little practical knowledge as he’d gleaned all those years in a Circle.

He does as he’s told, pulling soap and toothpaste from his pockets and stacking them neatly on Shianni’s little plastic table. He puts far too much effort into it, far too much focus, stacking and restacking and then once again, just to avoid accidentally overhearing or feeling awkward with idleness. It isn’t all that long, though, before Mahariel appears in the doorway and waves him forward. “Ready for the Hill?”

He nods and follows her out the door and notes that Shianni is no longer in the living room.

“May I ask,” he starts, when the door closes behind them and they are swept up in the din of the slums. “Was she alright?”

“No,” Mahariel says, a quiet fury in her voice. “But she will be.”

They leave the alienage in silence, not awkward, but tense. It’s not him she’s wearing that scowl for, he knows, but still, he doesn’t press her ‘til they’ve covered several miles and the pointed rooftops of the upper class mansions are towering before them.

This whole bloody district in ruin and these people up on their hill, looking down their noses through their gates and fences and pretty, manicured hedges. _No wonder we’re all so bitter,_ he thinks, watching Mahariel take a few steps to the iron fence.

She kneels before it, gripping the bars and pressing her face through the space in between and whispering into the thick hedges behind it. “Can Red Jenny come and play?”

Oghren had told him about that—Red Jenny. Not the Wardens either, he’d said, but another Extension, another friend. Most of the time anyway.

“Got to be careful with the Jennies,” Mahariel had said, propping her feet up on their coffee table. “They help us because we’re doing stuff they want us to do, for now. But they won’t stick their necks out.”

A hand stretches out from the shrubbery and grips a bar to Mahariel’s left; with a quick twist and a little pop, the bar comes loose and Mahariel waves him over, already putting her leg through the opening.

Hedges, he discovers, are quite bristly.

“Why didn’t you just do it yourself?” He’s careful to keep his voice down; there must be guards on patrol. But surely she could’ve popped out a bar in a fence.

“One,” she says, grunting as she pulls her hair out of the spindly branches. “This is Jenny territory; you don’t just waltz into someone’s house without asking, right? And two, a happy Jenny is the only reason we can get in and out of here at all. You piss off the Jennies and you always get caught. Always.”

“Ah,” he says, walking behind her once again. That makes sense. Sometimes he’s embarrassed to ask things like that—they’ll think he’s got no common sense, that he’s stupid. But you don’t have to know things in a Circle, not like you have to know things out here—not social manners or bartering or stealing soap from a drugstore. And certainly no one there teaches you. It’s a different sort of survival, a different set of rules. Here, Mahariel is the decoy and he’s the one hiding in plain sight, but in the Circle, to be seen was only less dangerous than to be forgotten completely. The same need for careful balance, a different tight rope to walk.

“I heard they still haven’t sold off the old Howe place,” she says. “And lucky us, too; it’s nearby, on the edge.”

And it is—big house, _huge_ house, and right across the street. “Middle of the day and you’d think that would be the worst time to come, but no,” Mahariel had told him. “Everyone important’s off doing their important business; everyone who doesn’t matter is off wasting their own time. And the guards think we don’t have the guts for it, so they only bother to look at night.”

Hiding in plain sight. It’s not just cleverness that he likes about her—it’s also, like she said, the guts.

She has a quick look around and picks the lock on the back door. “Remember to lock it back,” she tells him. “Else we’ll have people looking out.”

They go right past the kitchen. “Um, don’t we want food? Isn’t that why we came?”

“Rich tits don’t store the sort of food that keeps in their kitchens; that’s for guests and booze and salads. We want the servants’ pantry. Cans and boxes and things.”

Another question he feels silly for having asked, but why should he? He’s never had a servants’ pantry, never had food to spare or guests for dinner.

The Howe’s, he’s heard, have been out of this house less than six months. He’d still been in Kinloch when the election had blown everything out of the water, hadn’t been very up in politics. They weren’t helping him and Maker knew no one who had the access was going to give him a proper report. All he really knows is that the Howe’s fucked up, as did quite a few politicians last year.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Mahariel’s rifling through dusty shelves and grabbing every can of food she can find, packets of dried noodles and dressings, a few tins of instant coffee and a even a packet of cookies.

His jacket’s stuffed—pockets and hood and even the lining is filled with as much as they could fit. His jeans too, and even some packets of seasoning are stuffed into his shoes. And she’s no better off; she looks like she’s gained fifty pounds under her clothes and he wonders how in the world she’s keeping it all secure.

It’s an awkward hobble back to the fence, and one quick shove from her to get him behind a bush as a guard makes a round down the street.

She pushes him through the hedges first and then shuffles and pushes and grunts her way out behind him. He’s ready to leave, to get as far away from here as they can, even considering how much better it went than he’d expected, but she stops and, of all things, rips a strip from the hem of her shirt.

He’s noticed that, now he thinks of it—they have such tattered clothes. He’d thought it was because clothes were just as hard to come by as everything else and a much lower priority but no, it’s because they’re ripping them.

“You’re ripping your shirt,” he whispers. It comes out a bit harsh, but it’s confusion and anxiety, not impatience.

“Favors for favors,” she recites, tying it to the fence post next to the opening.

“What does that mean?”

“The Jennies did us a solid,” she says. “So if they need the Warden’s to take care of something, they bring a token. This,” she says, tightening the knot to her satisfaction. “Is the token.”

He sighs a bit more heavily than he means to as they make their way down the Hill, bags and bundles bouncing in their clothes. The walk back is going to be just a bit longer and more tiring than the walk that brought them here.

“What’s wrong, Anders?”

“I just feel like I’m never going to get the hang of all this,” he says. He’s not stupid; he’s not lacking in common sense or incapable of understanding anything. He just feels so out of place and that’s infuriating. This is what he’d wanted, after all—his freedom, to be out in the world doing what he wanted, to not be hounded by the Circle. But it’s not quite what he’d thought it would be.

“Anders, you escaped,” she says and reaches out to touch his hand (a bit awkwardly for the burden of the food in her sleeves). “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who managed it. You’re clever and you’ll find your place much easier than you think. Besides, you’re not the weirdest person I know.”

He laughs. “Well, there’s that,” he says.


	4. Fixer Uppers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mahariel has a busy day dealing with meetings, team morale, drug theft, and a new, embarrassing I-Almost-Got-Arrested Story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. So that update only took like 6ish months. Go me. I'm garbage.

Gods save her, Mahariel hates meetings.

Oh, she knows they’re important and she knows they’re necessary, but there’s not a moment that goes by in a meeting when she wouldn’t rather be doing something— _anything_ —else.

She would, for example, rather be out in the garden, watching Merrill and Velanna drawing the buds from the earth with their magic. Or sparring in the backyard with Alistair and Oghren. Or sneaking into Vaughn’s estate with Zevran to kill the despicable noble bastard.

Vaughn’s family is still highly regarded though—no easy way to get in there. She’ll have to think on this one, figure out a way to do it on her own. This isn’t a Warden thing; it’s a personal thing. And even if the others—or most of the others—would agree, she can’t risk implicating the whole of the Wardens for little more than bloody revenge. She’ll find Soris too. But she’s got to be careful that—

“Right, Mahariel?” Alistair nudges her with his elbow and she’s brought (reluctantly) back to the present. Although, she’s got no idea what they’ve been discussing.

“Um, right,” she says, in a tone that she hopes doesn’t betray her inattentiveness.

And then they all start laughing—even Merrill covers her mouth with her hand as the giggles pour out.

“What? What are you all laughing at?” But no one answers her, they just carry on. She jabs Anders, on her other side, with her elbow. “What is it?”

“You—Alistair just gave us the most detailed report of your sex life,” he says between breaths. “You were quick to back him up.”

She rolls her eyes and exhales. This is not the first time they’ve played this trick on her; she ought to have learned her lesson by now: pay attention to the debriefs.

“Don’t know what our darling virginal Alistair would know about anybody’s sex life,” she says, cutting her eyes and smiling sweetly at him.

Alistair’s cheeks flush red as beets and he coughs a few times before saying “Yes, well, we were just talking about Orlais, actually, so maybe we should get back to that.”

“Of course,” she says, the guiltiest in the room, but still feeling rather victorious.

“We, ah, made contact,” Zevran says, fingers lightly rubbing the bruise on his face.

Mahariel supposes the agent made some contact of her own as well. “And you hit on her?”

Zevran laughs. “I think it would be fair to say _she_ did the hitting on _me._ ”

“And I think it would be fair to assume that you deserved it?” Mahariel raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms. _Never mix business with pleasure, my ass._

He shrugs and holds up his hands. “That might be a fair assumption, yes.”

“Oh, I saw it happen,” Alistair interrupts. “It was great. Thought he was being smooth, sneaking up on the woman and _pop!_ She hit him right in the face. She’ll be a good one.”

“Yes, her skills are definitely a plus,” Zevran says. “She should be here in the next week or two—transfer paperwork and all that. And having an agent in the Chantry will definitely help.”

“I don’t know why we bother with it at all,” Velanna says from across the table. “It’s wretched. We ought to just burn the damned thing to the ground.”

And Mahariel wants to agree with her—does, even, to an extent—but that won’t help. “We can burn down every Chantry in the country,” she says. “The institution won’t go down quite as easily as that, though. They can build more churches, and we’ll be dead or behind bars to top it off.”

“What’s having a Chantry Sister going to do for us, though?” Anders speaks quietly. This is the first debrief he’s been to and it’s probably safe to assume he’s a bit intimidated by the idea of it. But she’s glad to see him speaking up and asking questions; she’s glad to see he’s getting more comfortable—well, as comfortable as is possible given their line of _work._

“For one thing, we’ll have a better eye on what the Chantry is doing behind the scenes,” Alistair says. “Any political movements, anything happens with the military or the Circles, and we’ll know first.”

“For another, we run out of options, she might be the only thing between one of us and the brand,” Mahariel adds. It’s a scary thought, Tranquillity, but it’s a reality. And they need to be ready for it.

Anders considers that for a moment, and she sort of regrets bringing up the brand when his face pales a bit, but then he cocks his head to the side. “But how do you know she won’t be spying on us for the Chantry?”

“We watch her like hawks,” Velanna says, hands in frustrated fists on the table. “And if she betrays us, we kill her.”

“Oh.”

Mahariel thinks that maybe death threats aren’t the _best_ way to ease him into these sorts of meetings, but, well, it is part of the job.

~~~

After the meeting—and gods, it was so long—Mahariel finds Alistair lazing on the couch and taps him on the top of his head.

“You get the coffee and sugar I left you this morning?”

“Yes,” he says, patting the spot next to him on the couch. “Thank you. I definitely needed that.”

She sinks heavily into the cushions. This couch had been quite the find; it’s more comfortable than a couple of the mattresses they have. It’s a fond memory too—her and Alistair trying to cart the damned thing down the street in the middle of the night. Still, she doesn’t know why he opted to sleep here last night. Or rather, this morning. It must have been very early when they got in.

He closes his eyes and leans back. She hadn’t noticed it before, but he’s looking a little pale. And it’s not like him to be lazing on the couch in the afternoon. He’s usually occupying himself with trying to fix things around the house (and then, of course, Velanna follows behind, fixing what he’s managed to make worse).

“You feeling ok? You look a little rough,” she says, bringing the back of her hand to his forehead. A bit of fever, she notes. Not so bad, but enough that they ought to do something about it now, while it’s manageable.

“You know, most women would say I look _rugged_ , Mahariel. You’re wounding my pride.” He doesn’t open his eyes though and his false grin doesn’t impress her.

“Impossible! Noble bastard like you ain’t got any pride left to wound,” she teases. But he’s starting to get a little clammy and the cool sweat forming on his face is making her worry a bit. She’s probably overreacting—she tends to do that, truth be told—but they can’t afford to all be down with a flu or something. “Hey Anders,” she calls, tilting her head backward toward the hallway. “Come here a minute!”

Anders ducks his head under the door frame of his room and leans into the hallway. “Did you need something?”

“Can you come look at Alistair? I think he’s caught something.”

Anders’ magic is much different from Velanna’s and Merrill’s. She doesn’t know much about magic, really—just made guesses from what she’s seen—but there’s something distinct about the way Anders moves, the way the color almost drains from him and how he stills when he works.

Velanna and Merrill don’t do that. They move much more, make gestures and are, on the whole, just much more expressive. And they never seem quite as tired as Anders does, afterward.

_Maybe it’s because they’re Dalish,_ she reasons. _Or maybe they use a different sort of magic. Are there different sorts? Does it work that way?_

She shrugs. Hell, she doesn’t know.

“I _think_ ,” Anders says, bringing his hands away from Alistair’s face and taking a seat beside him on the couch. “He’s picked up the flu or something.”

“You can’t tell?” She’d thought that was what healers... did.

Anders shakes his head. “Not really; it doesn’t exactly work like that.”

“Well, can you do something?”

“Not much. I don’t suppose we can just take him to the doctor for some antivirals?” Mahariel shakes her head and Anders rubs his chin before he continues. “He’ll need something for the fever, at least. Do we have anything like that?”

“Didn’t you get the aspirin when we were out?”

“I—” Anders blushes furiously. It’s quite a sight. She ought to be chastising him, of course—they can’t afford to be forgetful like that. A bottle of aspirin isn’t such big deal, but little things add up and there are too many ways for things to go wrong thanks to little mistakes. But he doesn’t need her to tell him that and seeing the sheer horror at his mistake on his face is enough to keep her silent.

“I can go get some,” she says, putting her hand on his arm to let him know it’s ok. “I’ll just go ahead and pick up some good stuff. Write it down though, else I’ll come back with a box full of vitamins or something.”

“You don’t have to make another trip for me,” Alistair says.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not for you,” she tells him, her eyes roving anxiously over his increasingly pale face. “You’ll have everyone else sick if I let you carry on like this.”

He moves his hand—to flip her off, she expects—but doesn’t quite get to it. Instead he just grins and says “Right, of course. Don’t want that.”

~~~

She doesn’t especially like making runs by herself, but it’s the best option for now. She’d wanted Anders to keep an eye on their poor, sick babe.

“Tease him if he starts whining too much,” she’d said.

“You know,” Alistair had said back. “Some people actually have kindness in them; _some_ people do nice things for sick people.”

“And _some_ people,” she’d said, messing his hair, “are overly dramatic when they get the sniffles.”

_Besides,_ she decides, walking through the door of the drugstore. _I don’t need extra hands just for a couple of pill bottles._ It’s not the same drugstore they’d come to this morning, of course, but still, she certainly doesn’t need another elf wandering around with her. She’s suspicious enough on her own.

She looks over the list of ingredients— _look for drugs with this stuff in them,_ Anders had explained. She’s got no idea how to _say_ most of these things, let alone what they’re used for.

The cashier watches her carefully as she makes her way down a few aisles of toiletries. The medicines are just out of view of the front counter, but right in sight of the pharmacy desk.

She picks up a couple of boxes of— _what is this? Oh, condoms, lovely_ —and pretends to compare them, watching the singular pharmacist move from the counter to the stock wall to the drive-through window and back. If she can find the bottles she needs and time it just right...

She puts one box back on the shelf and replaces it with another, for further comparison of course, while she scans the shelves.

She also briefly wonders if they have whatever this is in gummy chewables, just for more teasing. _Ah, here we are. Not gummies though. Shame._

She glances quickly back to the pharmacy desk, the technician too busy to notice her, and gives the bottle in her hand a gentle shake—they didn’t put enough cotton inside to stifle the noise. Damn.

She turns toward the desk, the bottle mostly obscured in her hand by the length of her sleeve, and puts the boxes of condoms back on the shelf where they were, waiting for the pharmacist to turn away so she can fit the pill bottle into the waist of her pants.

So far, so good. With the little bottle mostly secured by the stretchy waist of Alistair’s sweat pants, she turns toward the front of the store. And then a phone rings and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

The pharmacist answers it, mumbles a few things into the receiver, and lays it on the desk. The he heads to the back, behind the shelves stocked with prescriptions, and she hears a door click shut.

She should think it through, really, but it hadn’t been part of the plan and there’s no time now, so she just glances around— _coast is clear_ —and hops the counter.

She thinks her heart will pound right out of her chest as she rifles through bottles and paper bags and vials with too-tiny-to-read labels. And none of this shit seems to be in alphabetical order, which makes no sense to her at all. _Ostel? Oscle? Osel... Got it!_

She shoves the little bag into the pocket of her sweats and can hear just the faintest sound of a door opening. She lunges for the counter, loses her balance on the way over it, and falls flat onto her face—but on the side of the counter she’s supposed to be on, and she’s still got the medicine, so it’s a win, even if her nose is starting to bleed.

“Maker, are you alright?” The pharmacist comes from behind her and helps her up and she prays to every god she’s ever heard of that the other pill bottle doesn’t slide down the leg of her pants.

“I’m fine,” she says, holding her hand to her nose and blood starting to pool between her fingers. “Just clumsy.”

“Well, let me get you something—”

“No,” she says, far too quickly. She’s gotten all shaken up; she has to regain control of this or she’s going to blow it just from panic. “No. I’m fine, really, thank you. I’ve, uh, got a friend waiting for me outside.” There’s blood in her mouth and sliding down the back of her throat and the idea of it, more than anything, threatens to make her sick. She’s got to get out of here.

She pulls her arm away from him and starts walking toward the front of the store, chancing a glance at her pocket to be sure the prescription bag isn’t peeking out. The pharmacist calls out to her a couple of times before she rounds the shelves and she’d be free as a bird if only the damned cashier weren’t staring at her in horror.

“Excuse me,” the woman calls. But Mahariel keeps going and the sound of the pills shaking with each step seems to be the loudest thing she has ever heard.

“Excuse me,” the cashier calls out again, and Mahariel looks over her shoulder to see the woman making her way around the counter.

_So close. So close. Just a few more steps—_

“Hey! I know you!” Someone—not the cashier—grabs her sleeve and tugs at her.

_Shit. Motherfucking shit gods damn it all to—_

When Mahariel turns around, a boy is holding the sleeve of her shirt and staring up at her. Well, _up_ might be a bit of an overstatement. _Tall bloody shems._ And the cashier is quickly approaching, her arm extended toward the two of them as she hurries toward the door.

“You’re that elf—that girl,” he says. “That girl from my brother’s job.”

She means to pull away, but what he says catches her off-guard and, now she thinks of it, he does look sort of familiar. “Your brother?” Ugh, she regrets talking immediately, as the blood barely kept at bay by her hand makes its way past her lips. She can’t have even lost that much but the thought of it is starting to make her dizzy.

But as she’s asking, a man walks through the door and bumps into her, sending her not-so-secure-anymore bottle of pills right down the leg of her pants and clattering onto the floor and, to make things worse, she instinctively holds out her hand for balance and gets blood all over her shirt.

“I am so sorry,” the man says, reaching out to steady her. And then he pales considerably once he’s caught sight of all the blood. “Maker, I am _so_ sorry. I didn’t, ah, I—” He moves his hands up and down, fretting over the space between them and looking back and forth between her and the pill bottle on the floor and the boy behind her as though one of them will provide him the right words.

“Excuse me, miss—” If the cashier was chasing her out of concern (which Mahariel seriously doubts in the first place), that concern is replaced by staggering disapproval when the woman reaches down to pick up the pill bottle.

_This is it,_ she thinks, calm defeat overtaking her. _A nosebleed and an idiot is all it takes to get me caught._

_Damn._

The cashier narrows her eyes and shakes the bottle in Mahariel’s face. “Were you trying to _steal_ this?”

_No,_ she means to say, but gods, there’s more blood in her mouth and her fingers are slimy with it and she might faint. She really might.

“You answer me, you thieving knife-ear. _Were you trying to steal this_?”

“No,” she stammers. “No, I—” But she doesn’t know what to say. This isn’t part of the plan. To be fair, planning has never been her strong suit but _this—_ a nosebleed and a couple of strangers and prescription meds in her pocket? Gods, _none_ of that is possible to account for. _Shit._

“No, that’s mine,” the man says, holding out his hand for the bottle.

“It’s yours?” The cashier, understandably so, seems a bit sceptical of that. Mahariel, for her part, is having a hard time not bursting into nervous laughter. _What the actual fuck is happening?_

“Yes. It’s mine.” He grasps at the air impatiently when she doesn’t give him the medicine. “I came to get a refund for it, but I, ah, remembered I don’t have my receipt, so...”

The cashier doesn’t hand it to him, but she doesn’t yank it away either when he reaches out and takes it.

The younger boy nudges Mahariel’s arm and hands her the flannel shirt he’s stripped out of, leaving him in a t-shirt absolutely covered in griffons (which makes her want to laugh but, gods, her nose is _still_ bleeding). “Here you go,” he says. “Use this.” He gestures for her to bring the shirt to her face and she does, although she’s still very uncertain about how this whole mess is going to play out. She’d run right now if she knew she could get away.

“Yes, well,” the man says, nervously shoving his hair behind his ear. And that’s when Mahariel remembers him. _The screwdriver guy. From the hardware store!_ He coughs and stuffs the pill bottle into his pocket. “We should be going. Need to, ah, get our friend back home so she, ah—for her face—her nose, I mean. Yes. Come on, Thomas.” He grabs Mahariel’s arm and tugs her along with him, walking briskly through the door and across the parking lot with the boy, Thomas, close behind.

~~~

“You’re an idiot,” Thomas says, laughing. “That was awful.”

Mahariel listens to their playful bickering from the backseat of the car. She can’t help but think how much easier and quicker the Wardens could get things done if they had a car. This one sort of smells like French fries though. Plus, it’s one more thing that’d be traceable... maybe not such a good idea after all.

“You should be nicer to me, Thomas,” the screwdriver guy says back. “I bought you chicken nuggets yesterday.”

Mahariel pulls the borrowed flannel from her face and wipes the back of her hand across her upper lip, testing for more blood. Seems to have stopped though, at last.

“Hey, um, what’s your name? Screwdriver guy?”

She apparently startles him— _not like he could’ve possibly forgotten I’m back here already_ —because he taps the breaks and she’s jolted forward a bit. _Great,_ she thinks. _All I need: smack my face on the back of a car seat and start up another nose bleed._

“Oh, my name. I’m—I’m Nathaniel,” he stammers, watching her in his rear-view mirror.

“Nathaniel, got it. Ok well, thanks for... _that_.” _Whatever the hell_ that _was,_ she doesn’t add. “And for the shirt, but you can just let me out now, thanks.”

“We can drive you home,” he says, his eyebrows pulling together. “You don’t have to—”

“No thanks, I’m fine. Really. Just let me out up here somewhere.” It’s a nice gesture, she supposes, but if she hadn’t been in such a rush to get as far away from that drugstore as possible, she’d never have even gotten into the car with him. She doesn’t know him. He’s just some shem guy who gave her a screwdriver for gods know why.

_Oh shit._ She remembers now: Anders forcing her back through the door of the damned store, laughing at her until she complimented the poor guy’s shirt. _Dammit._

“Right here,” she says quickly, pointing at the little sidewalk bench on the corner. “This is great. Thanks.” And she starts wrenching open the door before he’s even fully stopped the car.

“Whoa, whoa. Hang on,” he says, pulling to a stop and scowling at the honking car behind them. He shifts into park and then turns around in his seat. “It’s really no trouble,” he says again. “I’d be glad to—”

But she cuts him off again. No way is she having some stranger come by the house. “No. I mean, no thank you. Really, I have to decline, so if you’ll just let me out of your car...”

He doesn’t push it, though his face betrays that he’d like to. _Well, good then._ At least she doesn’t have to worry about him being some overly pushy creep. Would’ve probably traumatized the little(ish) boy if she’d had to beat up his... _brother?_ Or something. Whatever, doesn’t matter. She needs to get out of this car.

Thomas leans over the driver’s side to stick his head out the window once she’s fully out. “Can we have your phone number?”

“My... phone number?” Add that to the list of information this man is not going to get about her.

“Ah, just ignore him,” Nathaniel says, although again, his face betrays him, this time in the form of a blush. “We don’t actually have a phone, so it’s sort of pointless.”

“Right,” she says. She’s not got much experience with meeting handsome men while she’s stealing prescription drugs and fleeing a store with a nose bleed, but this whole thing seems to have gotten excessively awkward.

After a decently lengthy pause, another car honks behind him and he seems to realize he can’t have his car parked along the street while he... well, just _looks_ at her. She’s beginning to think he might be a bit... stupid. To be fair, though, he had come up with that refund story pretty quick.

“Oh, right, well, bye then. Um, be careful, I suppose?” He shoves Thomas back into his own seat and swats at the boy’s seatbelt.

“You, uh... you too? I guess,” she says, holding up her hand in a curt wave.  And then she simply turns around and starts heading back home—with a few detours just in case—without looking back at him.

~~~

When she makes it back, she tosses the meds to Anders and immediately sinks into the couch next to Alistair, who is—not surprisingly—snoring.

Anders sits up very straight when he sees the dried blood on her lip (and chin and neck and hands and shirt and _gods,_ just look at it all). “What in the world happened to you?”

“I fell,” she says simply, shutting her eyes and leaning back into the comfort of their raggedy couch.

“You... _fell_? That’s it?” She feels his weight drop in carefully beside her and opens one eye to see him reaching toward her face, hand all glowy and full of some tingly energy that she can only describe as _minty._

She bats his hand away, however. “I don’t need all that,” she says. “I fell. I fall pretty often. It’s not a big deal.”

The magic immediately falls away to nothing and she can’t decide if he looks hurt or just confused. Either way, she’s quickly reassessing what she said, in case she’s missed some subtle insult or something.

“But isn’t this what you brought me here for?”

_Ah. Got it._

“No,” she says. “I brought you here because you needed a place to go. The magic is... a bonus,” she finally settles on. Seems a decent enough explanation.

“A bonus you won’t let me touch your face with,” he says, and still, despite his casual tone, she can still see the worry in the lines of his face. If she knows anything about anything, it’s people being scared of her because they don’t understand her. It’s feeling like shit because of it, too.

“You get tired when you cast,” she explains, closing her eyes again, but reaching out to take his hand. “No point in wasting your energy on a silly nosebleed that’s already dried up.”

He doesn’t say anything, but she can feel him shift, can feel the muscles of his hand and arm relax.

“And trust me,” she says, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “There’ll be _plenty_ for you to do.”


End file.
